The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Office of the Actuary (OACT) just released its projections for national health spending through 2021. The picture isn’t pretty, as health spending will continue to increase at a much faster rate than the gross domestic product (GDP), consuming 19.6 percent (almost one-fifth) of the nation’s economy in 2021.

Growth in health spending will remain modest until 2014, when Obamacare expands Medicaid to an additional 19.6 million Americans and creates exchanges to regulate private insurance and administer new federal subsidies. Once these changes go into effect, Medicaid spending will increase by 18 percent, and private health insurance spending will increase by 7.9 percent, since more people will gain coverage through the government-run exchanges. According to OACT, “Together, Medicaid and private health insurance spending contribute to an overall acceleration in projected national health spending growth to 7.4 percent, which is 2.1 percentage points faster than would be expected in the absence of health reform.” [link] [emphasis mine]

I personally don't think these projections will hold up. With a third of America's wealth having evaporated in just the last three years, there's no way the system can sustain such growth in health care costs. There just isn't that much cash available anymore.

But the projections are staggering all the same.

So how did we go from Obama declaring that he would lower costs to government calculations that have revealed a stupefying explosion in cost instead.

Answer: The man was - and is - too grossly incompetent to lead such an effort. That's how.